"I hope it’s a wakeup call for people in upstate New York," said Ed Kinane, a long time activist with the Syracuse Peace Council.

"Very fortunately it crashed into water and not on land. So I hope people think, ‘hmm, it could have been otherwise,'" he said.

The Peace Council is pushing Syracuse lawmakers to ban drone flights over the city, but such a ban would have no effect on military aircraft. The 174th recently began flying their training flights over parts of the city.

Kinane says if this accident helps their efforts, that’s a silver lining.

According to Bloomberg News, the Air Force’s Reaper and Predator drones are among the most accident-prone of its fleet. There are 9.31 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. That's three-times the average of the rest of the Air Force's fleet.

The Air National Guard says the Reaper is safe and they will thoroughly investigate the accident.